History of Dakota Territory, volume III, Part 29

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1146

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upward. The reference of the Mitchell knockers to the west of the Missouri as 'gumbo,' 'prairie dog,' 'rainless desert,' etc., are as absurd as time has proved the opinion of General Sibley, quoted above, to be. And the Mitchell knockers cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for their misrepresentations."-Aberdeen News, August 6, 1904.

"When John Longstaff was moving heaven and earth to get the capital re- moved from Pierre to Huron he never had any conscientious scruples of 'putting the state seal of approval upon the removal of public institutions.' This, John now claims, would be the result of moving the capital from Pierre to Mitchell. Charles McLeod, of the Aberdeen News, is also much afraid that if the capital is moved that there might be a possibility of Aberdeen's losing its normal school. It is strange how a man's ideas are dwarfed when they get on the oppo- site side of the fence. The two are putting up a Pierre capital campaign bluff." Mitchell Republican, August 10, 1904.

In August, 1904, the Webster World declared that Pierre owed the state $20,000 in back taxes and was bonded for $350,000 which the state some day would become responsible for should the capital remain at Pierre.

Said the Dell Rapids Tribune in August, 1904, "The Pierre people cannot present a single good argument for the retention of the capital at Pierre. They are putting in their time wailing that the supporters of Mitchell are injuring the state. The 106,500 applications for the 2,500 quarter sections of Rosebud lands show how little ground there is for their wailings. It will not injure the state to remove the capital to a more accessible point, nor does it injure the state to say it ought to be done."

The Scotland Citizen said in August, "The State of South Dakota doesn't need any presents. It is able to buy a capital site and to erect its own buildings if need be. The great purpose in removal is to locate the capital where it will be convenient for the public. At Mitchell it will always be convenient for the great majority of the people-at Pierre never."

The Vermillion Republican of August, 1904, declared that "for the space of about three weeks the partisan press supporters of Pierre's tottering prospects in the capital campaign have kept up a small-bore fusilade along their entire firing line, their range all concentrated on a straw dummy of their own setting up, towit: That the removal of the capital from the frontier to a more populously and commercially central point will start the removal of all other state institutions from their present respective and satisfactory anchorages to some other though as yet undesignated place or places. The sound of this snap-shot style of argu- ment is now dying away and its yellow smoke is clearing off. Not a single col- lege, normal or other school, asylum or prison-pen has been loosened from its moorings, and nobody residing in the towns where these had been originally

placed has been hurt. All this blow by the Pierre blasé buzzers about capital removal's affecting the university, or the agricultural college, or the asylum for the blind, or the penitentiary, or the school of mines, is the merest buncomb, and our suggestion is to treat it as it deserves-just bluff it down, cough it down, sneeze it down, hoot it down, and then give Mitchell a still larger ma- jority than was intended before played out Pierre resorted to such tricky tactics."

"No one outside of Mitchell questions the agricultural possibilities of Day and Brown counties, but if their railroad facilities ended at Big Stone and Huron

MISSOURI RIVER SCENE, PIERRE

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would the residents of those counties be raising grain today, or would they be raising products which they could either hand to the market in concentrated form, such as wool, or else be driven to market as sheep and cattle? A little common sense applied to a question is worth tons of such rant as is being put out by the Mitchell crowd." -- Pierre Capital-Journal, August, 1904.

"We are not knocking nor slandering the western part of the state, as Pierre claims whenever facts are stated or statistics referred to. Proving statements and being honest with the people is not knocking, and Pierre will find it difficult to create a sentiment in its favor, as it is trying to do, by continually harping about 'knocking the state' and 'Mitchell's campaign of slander.' Pierre knows that in this campaign it is necessary, in order to get the support of any conscien- tious voter, to prove that the country between Pierre and the Hills will be as thickly populated as the country east of the river. It has been attempted during the last six months to lead the people to believe that that country is not a cattle country, but better fitted for agricultural purposes. It has claimed that the country is rapidly settling up and that the ranches are being vacated and that the homesteaders have been rapidly moving in. Its purpose has been to deceive the people into believing that it will be the center of populations."- Mitchell Republican, August 16, 1904.

The Redfield members of the tri-city agreement were Z. A. Crain, W. C. Kiser, T. S. Everett, E. C. Isenhuth, H. P. Packard, S. E. Morris and W. F. Bruell. The three committees agreed that all who participated in the tri-city caucus and agreement should work for a resubmission resolution in the Legislature, that they owed their allegiance to the city winning out in legislative caucus and were in duty bound to stand by that city until the votes were counted. Afterward the members of the Redfield committee were interviewed with this result: Mr. Kiser said, "We entered into a compact with Mitchell and Huron that we would work jointly for resubmission and each city for itself would strive to win votes and that all three would be bound by the result of a caucus of all the legislators who favored resubmission. That caucus was to determine which city should be pitted against Pierre. It was well known that but one city would be named in the resolution. After the question of which city should be inserted should have been decided, then all were to favor the resolution, which they did, and to stand by the outcome. The reason that led to the formation of the tri-city compact was because there was found to be a strong sentiment throughout the state in favor of removal. But from all sides there was doubt of its practicability, because, it was said, if either of the three towns shall find they cannot get it they will work to prevent resubmission and Pierre will beat the movement by playing one against the other. That this opinion was well based appears from the position that Huron now takes." Mr. Isenhuth said, "I propose to keep the faith by doing to others just as I would have expected them to do to Redfield. There was no question as to the nature of our compact and further, there is no question that it was the only way to secure a vote." Mr. Packard stated that Huron was as firm in promising support to the winning city as the other two; that Huron was out- spoken against Pierre as the capital, that the whole trend of the discussion in joint committee was that "any old place in the James River Valley" was prefer- able to Pierre; that it was part of the agreement that all three cities were to work for themselves and to work for removal. Mr. Morris said all were to work

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for the removal bill; that each committee was to do its best for its city ; that the choice of the legislative caucus was to determine the city to be pitted against Pierre; that there was a disposition with all the three committees to hedge when it came to making promises of support to the successful city; that it was not in his opinion implied in the contract that the other two should support the suc- cessful one at the polls. "It was argued," he said, "that the committees could not bind their constituents, and yet the logic of the combination was so forceful that the individual members of the committee seemed to acknowledge that their allegiance would be due to the city that might win out. I would certainly have expected their support had Redfield won. There was no question that all mem- bers agreed that any one of the three cities was preferable to Pierre." Mr. Everett testified that he had been a member of the Legislature three times, that at every session the discontent of the Pierre location was manifested and that this discon- tent had grown until resubmission was an easy matter. N. P. Bromley said, "I was a member of the Legislature, but not a member of the tri-city committee. I was asked to enter into an agreement with the members-elect from Beadle and Davison counties and did so at the request of the committee. In my opinion the three committees were removalists of the rankest kind and all seemed not only to agree that any one of the three towns was preferable to Pierre for the capital, but they were emphatic and outspoken. The very fact of entering into the compact is reason enough for me to feel that I am bound to support the town that won out and was named in the resolution by my vote and the vote of every member of the Legislature from the three counties."

In August, 1904, the Canton Times observed that the capital buttons issued by Mitchell conveyed the idea by the pictures of the capitol building thereon that the structure was to be given to the state permanently; and it furthermore observed that Mitchell promised that not a cent would it cost the state to remove the capital, all of which the Times refused to believe. The Mitchell papers defied the Times to show where they had ever said that the building was to be given permanently to the state and insisted that the City of Mitchell would pay every cent of the cost of removal. They further asserted that the Pierre sup- porters were forced to misrepresent matters in order to lay the foundation for an attack on Mitchell.

In August the Groton Independent insisted that before the capital was removed Pierre should be paid the $80,000 which it had invested in property for the state and which was accepted by the action of the state and that it should also be reimbursed for its expenses in the present campaign-a defensive one resulting from its acquirement of the capital as a result of the act of Congress which legally established there the temporary capital.

Early in September the Scotland Citizen-Republican remarked that "nothing has transpired since the meeting of the last Legislature to make Pierre more desirable as a capital location than it was at that time. The opposition now mani- festing itself against Mitchell from places that have always before been crying for capital removal can only be attributed to jealousy and in this feeling the people generally have no sympathy and should rebuke it. The strength of Pierre lies in the fact that no other town fears her supremacy, but a town that is so far removed from the people that it is beyond the reach of competition is hardly an appropriate place for the seat of government."

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"Pierre is up in the air and all at sea for campaign material and she is put- ting the whole press bureau at work concocting imaginary reasons why the capital shouldn't be removed and in so doing ignoring all of the main issues on which she has been beaten to a standstill."-Kimball Graphic late in August, 1904.

"About the only argument put forth in favor of retaining the capital at Pierre is that its removal would ruin the City of Pierre and take away all the value from the lands adjacent to the city, particularly those lying between the river and the Black Hills. Talk about knocking! No worse criticism could be made of the country than to say that its value depends entirely upon the fact that it is located near the capital of the state. Such talk is all bosh. It simply places Pierre and its adjacent territory in the position of paupers. The people of the state are under no obligation to pay tribute to keep up any city."-Scotland Citizen- Republican early September, 1904.

"Pierre is slandering South Dakota. Pierre by its misrepresentations is knocking the whole state. In attempting to mislead the voters to believe that the land west of the Missouri is as good for farming purposes as the land in the eastern part, Pierre 'is giving a black eye, so to speak, to the entire state. Men who came West and failed in the Rosebud drawing went over the land west of Pierre and from the papers of that city learned that the land in the eastern part of the state was no better than the land west of the Missouri River. They did not care to look any farther. Pierre cannot deceive the voters of the state, but she can deceive the residents of other states and in so doing injure the entire state. Governor Lee says, 'The removal of the capital will not cause the lands lying west of the river to decrease in value any more than it has caused them to increase. Farmers settle upon land on which they can live and it is not to the advantage of the state to get settlers by misrepresentation. We have a grand state, but there is no state in the Union that is all good, and when each portion of our state is used for what it is best adapted, the best results will be secured.' Pierre should discontinue its campaign of misrepresentation, the results of which are beginning to injure the reputation of the entire state."-Mitchell Republican.

In 1903 many opposed the capital location on the ground that the railroad therefrom westward to the Black Hills had not been built, though promised continuously as far back as 1889-90, or longer. "We have hugged that bull train phantasmagoria until it is almost a sacrilege with some to think of any place but Pierre. It happened that Pierre was the last place from which the stage coach lumbered and the bull train crawled before the Elkhorn Railway struck this country. If the last terminus had been Bismarck, N. D., or Sidney, Neb., some of us would have maintained that one of these places should be the capital of the state; and our reasoning would be a mighty sight more logical than now, because either place is more accessible to the people of the Hills than Pierre. And Pierre hasn't overlooked anything. It has showered prodigious professions of love for the Hills, claiming our support as a matter of absolute and arrogant right. Her whole claim for support for twenty years has been based upon the assertion that some time the Northwestern Railroad would parallel its own line into the Hills. Many of us have taken that assertion seriously, grumbled a little about dying of old age-and supported Pierre. As a matter of fact the citizens of the Hills should and will take this capital relocation question just as it seems to be forced on us. We have voted and 'plugged' for the present loca-

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tion thirteen or fourteen years, not because of accessibility or desirability, but because of a promise of a railroad across the country. If the building of a rail- road is contingent let us give Mitchell and the Milwaukee road a chance. We can't be any worse than now and taking Pierre's only argument as gospel truth, we will be infinitely better off in the matter of railroad connection. Every voter of the Black Hills should study this matter seriously. Mitchell seems to be hav- ing her troubles against the location on the east side of the river. For various reasons there is a sentiment against the relocation in the eastern section, to over- come which will require a most continuous and adroit campaign on the part of the city's boosters. Despite Pierre's disadvantages from the standpoint of rail- road accessibility the jealousies of contemporary cities and the fact that relocation will be expensive, handicaps Mitchell greatly. But whether beaten or not one cannot help but admire the whole-hearted manner in which the citizens of that city have taken up the fight."-Sturgis Record, September, 1903.

In September it was argued by Mitchell that, while most of the soil west of the Missouri River was good, the rainfall was not sufficient for the wants of agriculture, but was ample for range purposes; that a quarter section was not sufficient for the support of a family; and that therefore the bill pending in Con- gress, which provided that homesteads of 640 acres could be filed on, was just and was intended to meet the semi-arid conditions by making each claim large enough for a small range, the assumption being that each section would contain enough farming land in addition to support at least one family.

"There wasn't a word said about the country around Pierre until the boomers there began to tell fairy stories about the waving corn fields, the tall grains, the great productiveness and the general superiority of the country around them on both sides of the river in Hughes, Sully, Lyman, Stanley and other counties to any other part of the state. When we read that we had to say something or

explode. * * Where is their prosperity? In the money they made out of the suckers who were green enough to buy some seven hundred thousand dol- lars worth of bonds which the good people of Pierre afterwards repudiated? If this is their progress and prosperity we want none of it in ours."-Hudson Hudsonite, September, 1904.

During the summer and fall of 1904 both Pierre and Mitchell secured free transportation for all persons who desired to visit those cities-Pierre from the North-Western and Mitchell from the Milwaukee. Many thousands of people took advantage of these offers. The two railways were sharply engaged in the contest. It was said that the North-Western refused to connect with the Mil- waukee, when asked to do so, in order to bring speedily the crowds that wanted to see the corn palace at Mitchell. Hughes County had an exhibit on that occasion, but in a separate building. The corn palace was never grander than it was this year. Sousa's Band was present at great cost and the display of grain, grass, vegetables, fruits and particularly corn, had probably never been surpassed in the state up to that time. There were free concerts each day and the palace was kept open until the election in November in order to help entertain the crowds that were brought there free by the railroad to see what might be the new state capital.

"When the Mitchell Capital Campaign Committee adopted the knocking method it committed a mistake that will cost it dear. All the experience of by-

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gone years shows that from the time the Pilgrim Fathers arrived on Plymouth Rock until Mitchell decided it wanted to become the capital of South Dakota the East has always knocked the West and the West has always overcome prejudice and false report and misrepresentation of every description and triumphed over its enemies. History will repeat itself in the capital campaign in South Dakota." -Aberdeen Daily News, September 5, 1904.

"Faulk County secured first place at the state fair at Yankton and Hughes County second place, with Bon Homme third. The fact that Hughes persists in getting so close to the front at every state fair is but another example of that provoking stubbornness of the people living in the neighborhood of the Missouri River who persist in turning a deaf ear to the assurances of the Mitchell people that their part of the state is a barren waste, making a fair cow pasture in favor- able seasons, but utterly unfit for farming purposes."-Aberdeen News, Septein- ber 20, 1904.

"Mitchell seldom overlooks an opportunity to make a fool break when the capital removal contest is involved. Its latest effort in that line was its refusal to allow Hughes County space in its corn palace exhibit. The action of the Pierre people in renting a room in the Widmann Hotel in which the products of the fine farms of Hughes County will be fittingly displayed will effectually counteract the efforts of the refusal of space in the corn palace and will place the Mitchell Capital Committee and the corn palace management in a very embarrassing position."-Aberdeen News, September 22, 1904.

"Hughes County exhibit at the Mitchell Corn Palace is now a standing joke throughout the state."-Alexandria Journal. "The Journal forgot to explain, however, that the joke is on the Mitchell fellows who 'have been referring to Hughes County as a barren waste. Notice the Pierre and Mitchell newspapers closely and you will see that the Pierre papers are doing all the chuckling over the incident, while the Mitchell papers are occupying columns of space with labored explanations of how it happened that Hughes County's exhibit at the Widmann Hotel, barred out of the corn palace, so greatly outclassed some of the exhibits from counties within the magic hundred-mile circle."-Aberdeen News, October 15, 1904.

"Railroad extensions do not depend upon so small considerations as the location of a state capital. If Mitchell has told the truth about the barrenness of the region west of the Missouri no railroad is going to expend millions of dollars traversing the desolate region. If the Mitchell people have been lying, as is generally understood among all South Dakotans who know anything about the region west of the river, the Milwaukee and the Northwestern will push across the country west of the Missouri from Pierre and Evarts as soon as the prices of material and the wages of labor make the move practicable."-Aberdeen News, September 19, 1904.

In September, 1904, Mitchell announced positively that as soon as the capital should be located at that city the Milwaukee company would at once extend their line westward from Chamberlain to the Black Hills, and pointed to the surveys, etc., that were then in progress west of the Missouri to confirm its state- ments. Pierre answered that this was only another dodge to secure the favor and support of the Black Hills.

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"If the Milwaukee intends building to the Hills it will build no sooner nor no later, on account of the location of the state capital. The Milwaukee will not build to the Hills, if it does build there, solely for the purpose of securing the patronage of the Hills people who may have occasion to visit the state capital. On the contrary, it will build because it wants its share of the freight and pas- senger traffic from the Black Hills to the twin cities and Chicago. And the Black Hills knows that as soon as one great railroad system starts to build across the country from the Missouri River to the Hills, the other will also commence operations and the Milwaukee is as likely to build from Evarts as from Cham- berlain, while the Northwestern will certainly build from Pierre alone. Thus the Black Hills' chances to obtain direct communication by rail with the state capital and the eastern part of the state are far better with the capital at Pierre than at Mitchell."-Aberdeen News, September 23, 1904.

"What South Dakota needs is more railroads and more people on her broad and fertile acres. Shall we vote to condemn one-half of the state and then expect capital to come to our assistance in the further development of a great state?"-Huron Huronite, October, 1904.

"This is not a railroad fight. The state capital does not belong to the rail- roads. It belongs to the people. The people pay the bills. It is the people's fight. The removal question must be settled by the people for themselves and not for the railroads. Naturally a railroad will favor the location at a place on its lines."-Aberdeen Daily News, October 29, 1904.

"The only 'barren waste' in the state is the waste of time and money in this capital removal deal by the Mitchell knockers."-Hitchcock Leader, October, 1904.

"There is one advantage that is coming in this capital fight and that is that most citizens will have a better idea of the whole state than they would have ever learned without this campaign. There is no doubt that the western part of the state is in a pioneer stage, but that is no proof that it will not develop in the future and provide homes for the enterprising settler. Local interests should not be considered in locating the capital of the state."-Gary Inter-State, 1904.

"Western South Dakota is giving the people in the eastern part of the state an object lesson in the agricultural possibilities of the 'barren waste.' A collec- tion of grain, grasses, vegetables and fruits has been made at Belle Fourche, Rapid City and Hot Springs, and the exhibit has been placed in a car and brought east of the river for display in as many localities as possible before election. The object of the display is thus stated by the Belle Fourche Bee: 'The Mitchell crowd has been so persistent in knocking the western part of the state, in order to make votes for Mitchell for capital, that the citizens of this section have decided to show the people of the eastern section that this is not a 'barren waste' and that Mitchell has been guilty of willful and gross misrepresentation. The farmers and fruit growers gladly present their products for the exhibit, as they resent the insult thrown at the west end of the state and are only too glad to be given an opportunity to repair if possible the great injury to the entire state that is resulting from the slanderous misrepresentations made by Mitchell knockers in order to secure the removal of the state capital to their city." "This probably is the first instance in history in which the people of one portion of a commonwealth have felt compelled to thus defend themselves against the slanders of another

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History of Dakota Territory, volume III, Part 29

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1146

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1146